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ABOUT Smoky Mountain Scientific

Smoky Mountain Scientific is a 501( c)(3) charitable organization dedicated to advancing scientific education.

 

MEET OUR TEAM: 

Yeah, just one dude selling stuff out of his house. 



NOT QUITTING MY DAY JOB

No, this is not my day job. By day, I'm a mild mannered chemistry professor.  Doing my best to stamp out the ignorance that runs rampant in my little corner of paradise.   Problem is, my employer can't get involved in commercial enterprises so I was stuck starting SmokyMtSci.  Truth be told, it is kind of fun and hopefully I won't lose too much money, get fired, or go to tax jail.

 

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

This guy named Ben and I designed the WheeStat potentiostat and I want to put it out there for other people to use. At first, I thought that if I published the design, people would make their own.  That didn't happen.  Instead, people kept asking if they could buy one. I tried to get my employer interested in building and selling these but they said no.

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WHAT ABOUT SUPPORT?
If you need help with a project that looks like traditional academics (research, education, community service), then I might be able to help you out as part of my day job. 

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PARTNERS

PUBLIC LAB

 

I'm involved with a non-profit called the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (also called Public Lab or PLOTS). Here is a link to their home page

LAST EVENT

2014 Atlanta Maker Faire, First weekend in October, 2014, Atlanta, GA

 

2014 SE Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Nasheville, TN

 

2013 Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA.

 

2013 OSHWA Meeting- Open Source Hardware Association annual meeting, MIT, Cambridge MA.

WHAT'S UP?

CURRENT PROJECTS:

If you would like me to put more effort into one of these projects, please send an email telling me which one.

 

The WheeStat Potentiostat.

After years of slow development, we finally have our new model in stock.  The Pico 2.1 boasts a number of design improvements and can source +/- 40 mA. We are working on a high current module that will increase the current output.

 

Spectroscopy Projects.

The spectrometer is coming along.  This is a project that deserves more attention than I have been giving it.  We recently found out that integration periods are limited by the software to about 56 ms or less.  The issue has to do with rolling over a 16 bit counter.  While the 56 ms limitation should not affect most applications, there are others (perhaps astronomical applications) may require longer integration times.  We are working on this and I think I have it fixed in new firmware.  If this is something you are concerned about, contact me at my gmail address and I will get back to you.

I began work on a microtiter plate reader based on our spectrometer. I am looking forward to getting back to that project.

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Electrocardiograph (ECG, also called EKG).

This seems like something that might be worthwhile.  While I have no plan to go through the paperwork to get FDA approval, there are a lot of people in the world who I think would benefit from the availability of low cost medical devices, especially in lower income countries.  I have already submitted a circuit board for fabrication.  Here is a link to the design we are starting with.  A schematic is presented on page 19.

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Stuff we have done recently:

Electrochemical Detector for Capillary Electrophoresis:

  Work during summer 2020 focused on developing an isolated, battery powered potentiostat for use in capillary electrophoresis.  The instrument is based on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W communicating over WiFi with a windows based host computer.  The Pi and attendant electronics are powered using a 12 volt lead-acid battery. I think this went rather well, but I have not heard back from our partners on this project.

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Migration from Texas Instruments based microcontrollers:

I have decided that TI is just not interested in helping the Maker community.  While I feel like I could probably get them to work with me, They do not seem to play well with the community that I choose to serve.

While I have migrated our spectroscopy effort to incorporate the Arduino compatible Teensy 4.1, I am still looking at other Arduino compatible options.  Mostly, I plan to use the Raspberry Pi Pico. I plan to have our instruments contain an Arduino compatible bootloader so others in the community can modify and upload the code

 

 

 

CONTACT

4989 Tilley Creek Road

Cullowhee, NC 28723

Tel: 828-201-0233
 

 

Mail:  j6summers@gmail.com

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